Outpost: Life on the Frontlines of American Diplomacy: A Memoir (21 page)

With little or no progress to report in the first week, I met with Secretary Albright and her spokesman, Jamie Rubin, who was emerging as a substantive advisor on Kosovo. Madeleine asked what I thought of possibly making a trip to Belgrade to tell Milosevic that he’d better get serious on the negotiations.

It was the first I had heard of the idea, though I didn’t think it was a bad one and wished I had thought of it myself. It would have the advantage of showing that we were prepared to go the extra mile to warn Milosevic, and would have the added benefit of making clear to him what we thought of his delegation’s behavior. I had always found that Milosevic was at his worst when he hadn’t seen us recently and received a dose of reality. I told the secretary I would think about it, but thought it was a good idea.

Just thirty minutes later, I, along with Wolfgang Petritsch and the Russian envoy, the affable, intelligent, but somewhat irrelevant Boris Majorsky, were seated in front of the press for our weekly press conference. The venue was a large indoor gymnasium, a basketball and volleyball facility in the village of Rambouillet. The reporters numbered into the hundreds. Phil Reeker, who had become the spokesman at Rambouillet (or, as I never tired of calling him, “the grim Reeker”), introduced us and called on the rock star of correspondents, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, who also happened to be the wife of Jamie Rubin, to ask the first question.

“This question is for Ambassador Hill. Ambassador, have you given any thought to making a trip to Belgrade to meet with Milosevic?” I realized that this idea was gaining currency.

On February 16, I flew to Belgrade in a U.S. military aircraft with Petritsch. Milosevic had long since lost any confidence that the process could lead to an outcome acceptable to the Serbs, but his inability to think strategically meant that he was going to make the job easier for us. He loudly rejected any role whatsoever for NATO, a sine qua non for any conceivable solution. He had never quite gotten over the inclusion of the word
interim
. To Milosevic, it felt like the eastern Slovenian agreement during the first week of Dayton, which had led to the imposition of Croatian sovereignty in that region. Interim was simply a means to give the Serbs in Kosovo “time to run away.”

To the extent I ever had any ability to reach Milosevic, it was fast depleting that winter. For the first time he tried to insist that I also see his new foreign minister, a clear sign that the Milosevic channel was coming to an end. I objected to seeing Foreign Minister Vladislav Jovanovic at all, pointing out to Milosevic that he did not seem to me in the loop, and, without being too tough on the foreign minister, questioned whether he was intellectually up to such issues. For a second, Milosevic showed a sign of his old self.

“You know, Serbian people are very proud that their foreign minister is a genuine Serbian peasant.”

But as uncooperative as the Serbs were being—and conveniently so as the goal increasingly became an effort to convince doubting Europeans and Russians that there was no other alternative—the Albanians were not much better.

Jamie Rubin was of the view that the real leader of the Kosovo delegation was Hashim Thaci and that Albright should focus her efforts on him. Jamie had begun to pay attention exclusively to Thaci, even going so far as to recommend combinations of suits and ties for him to wear. For all the time I have met and worked with foreigners, it would never
have occurred to me to tell one of them how to match a shirt and a tie, such was Jamie’s attention to detail. But Jamie had a definite point about focusing on Thaci as an eventual leader, a point that would be validated some years later when Thaci was elected prime minister.

I had no problem with a focus on Thaci, especially the need to get him on board, but given our reluctant European allies, on whose continent this war was raging, I believed we should play it straight with the others as well, and not put ourselves into domestic Kosovo politics, favoring those who engaged in violent resistance over those who for decades had not. I knew Rugova had enormous popularity (he would eventually be elected president in a free Kosovo) and that a tilt toward the KLA leadership might not serve us well, especially as we knew very little about Thaci at the time, whether he was a leader or a front for someone else. American foreign policy is replete with stories of supporting the more aggressive player in a civil war, only to find that that aggressive player was not at all our player. Since the Peace Corps I knew how fraught the process of picking someone else’s leadership could be.

Getting tough with the Albanians to get them to yes was not made any easier by their use of cell phones, a device that had not been as prevalent at Dayton in 1995. Tough talk with them would often result in someone calling one of their many supporters in Washington, who in turn would call the State Department and complain. Life in the big city, I explained to Phil and Tina.

The Kosovo Albanians allegedly did not really believe that NATO would come to Kosovo; instead they suspected the entire negotiation was a ruse of some kind to induce them to accept autonomy rather than independence; then, for whatever reason, NATO would not come to be part of the implementation. Wes Clark called to tell me he understood that this lack of trust was an enormous problem within the Kosovo delegation, but that he was willing to help by coming to Rambouillet whenever I needed him. “Just say the word and I’ll be there,” he told me. Other acquaintances of mine in Washington sent emails and suggested the same.
“Bring Clark to Rambouillet,” I told Tina and Phil. “There is something fishy in Brussels.”

American generals do not get four stars on their shoulders by accepting no for an answer (something I was to learn again when I was assigned to Iraq), but the French, who wanted no part of it, were resisting mightily Clark’s “send me in, coach” campaign. I said to Clark that, given that U.S. forces in Europe had well over one hundred thousand troops, surely someone, say a colonel doing planning for the Kosovo mission, could meet with the doubting Thomases of the Albanian delegation? No, the answer kept coming back from Clark. “I’m the only one who can put their concerns to rest.”

Finally, the French agreed that Clark would meet the Kosovars at a nearby French air base, which he did on February 22. That was as close as Clark was going to get to Rambouillet.

Just before the recess that was set to be called two weeks into the process, Thaci, to our great concern, left the conference on February 18, returning two days later with even tougher demands. He never said where he had gone, though the suspicion was that he went to see Adem Demaci, the firebrand self-appointed political leader of the KLA, who had refused to take part in Rambouillet. For months, Demaci had made outlandish and outlying pronouncements to the press in Pristina, so much so that the Serbs never interfered with him, such was his contribution to their argument that the KLA was simply a group of crazed radicals.

“Why can’t you agree to this?” I asked Thaci, truly not understanding whether he comprehended the near-fatal consequences for the Kosovars of a “no” answer.

“It is you who doesn’t understand,” he replied. “If I agree to this, I will go home and they will kill me.”

The Rambouillet conference was extended for three days at the request of the Contact Group ministers, who were spending more and more time at the meetings, between their duties managing their countries’ affairs in every other part of the world. I marveled at the amount of time
busy senior officials had for the problems of Kosovo, whose total population could fit into a small section of Beijing, Seoul, or Tokyo.

On the last day of the extended session, the Contact Group ministers met with the Serb head of delegation, Milutinovic. Tuna danced around as best he could but finally had to admit his country could not accept the presence of foreign troops on its soil and therefore could not accept the agreement.

The Kosovo Albanian delegation was completely split as the hour drew near. Thaci had become incommunicado; nor was Rugova prepared to take the lead. With hours to go, we were in a situation where both sides were saying no, an excuse for some of the assembled Contact Group ministers to wash their hands of the entire affair. Wolfgang and I went into the Albanian delegation room, an ornate, refurbished lower-floor room made of granite and wood paneling, richly appointed with tapestries. As I began my plea a cell phone started ringing, and an embarrassed Kosovar struggled to find the mute button.

“Turn that thing off,” I said, “because whoever is calling you cannot possibly have something more important to tell you than what I am about to say.”

My interpreter, Bix Aliu, an Albanian-American who had been living in Skopje and had accompanied me through many experiences in Kosovo, delivered my lines with great precision. Although an American through and through (he would soon go on to become a Foreign Service officer), Bix could not help but feel a sense that Kosovo’s moment had arrived, but that its leadership, all assembled in that room, was failing it.

“We have come a long way together, but this is the end of the road. If you do not accept this agreement, there is nothing I or anyone else can do for you. So now it is your choice.”

Wolfgang made a similar plea and we left the room. I slumped down on a stair step outside the room and accepted a cigarette from Jamie Rubin, as if taking up Jamie’s smoking habit would help. We waited.

After a half hour, Veton Surroi emerged. Veton was one of the
nonaligned group members, neither KLA nor LDK, whom I had never found all that enjoyable to deal with over the past nine months, and who hadn’t seemed to have much support among the others in the delegation. I was aware of that when he was banned from my meetings with the KLA leadership in Likove a few months before. He told Wolfgang and me that he had been asked to speak for the Albanian delegation to the Contact Group foreign ministers. His word was good enough for me, since there didn’t appear to be any other approach on the table.

I escorted him into the room where the Contact Group foreign ministers were meeting and told them that Surroi had an announcement for them. He said that the delegation accepted the plan but would need time to return to Kosovo to build support among the people there, since some aspects of it, namely autonomy rather than independence, would be problematic for them. That the delegation had to return to Kosovo did not please all the foreign ministers, but Secretary Albright made sure they understood that Veton’s message was a yes.

Outside the foreign ministers’ room I approached Veton. I told him that I had doubted him for many things he had done in the past, but that I would never forget what he had done on this day. He thanked me for my efforts, words that never came easily to the crusty journalist. I put my hand on his shoulder and told him we had much to do, and that the future might be as complicated as the past. He gave an understated nod and we parted.

The Kosovo Albanian delegation returned to Kosovo to prepare for peace, and to get others in Kosovo to do the same. The Serbs went home to prepare for war. Violence took another upswing, the expected spring fighting season coming early that year, as Secretary Albright had observed. I went to Kosovo to meet with KLA commanders west of Pristina, making our way cautiously through KLA checkpoints. By March 8 I was able to report that the KLA had definitively accepted Rambouillet.

Emissaries to President Milosevic all returned with the report that he had definitively rejected the Rambouillet Accords.

On March 19 in Paris, the entire leadership of the Kosovo Albanians signed the accords as Wolfgang Petritsch and I and others stood behind them. It was a bittersweet moment because everyone, but especially Wolfgang and I, knew that in the absence of a Serb signature and given the continued violence there would be war. But there was also something uplifting. After months and months of trying to encourage the Albanian leadership to work together, we had succeeded. I thought this might be a good omen for the future, but the gathering was mainly a repudiation of Serb propaganda—which I had heard many times from Milosevic himself—that the Albanian leaders could never work together. I looked over at Tina and Phil, two young Foreign Service officers who would both go on to make ambassador, and smiled. They had also put everything they could into the agreement. I was so proud of both of them.

Washington in its collective judgment decided that we needed to make one more try, and asked Holbrooke to return to Belgrade and meet with Milosevic. My own relations with Milosevic had deteriorated further in light of Rambouillet. The visit to Belgrade that I had made at the suggestion of Secretary Albright and Jamie Rubin had gone poorly. Later I was sent back again to Belgrade for the sole propaganda value of having Milosevic refuse to see me, which he obligingly did, sending me to his peasant foreign minister.

Holbrooke and I and a small delegation from Washington met with Milosevic the evening of March 22. He was in a fatalistic mood, to say the least.

“You are superpower. If you want to say that Tuesday is Thursday, you can do that. It doesn’t matter what the rest of us think.”

We spent hours and hours trying to find a way forward on the critical issue of NATO’s implementation of the Rambouillet Accords, but it was not possible. Milosevic—and many other Serbs—were not prepared to host foreign troops. Milosevic had told us that the question of NATO involvement in a Kosovo settlement was up to Serbia’s parliament, the Skupstina, and it would meet the morning of the twenty-third. That night
Holbrooke and I discussed whether there might be a way forward, but we both concluded that nothing would happen. Still, we decided to stay through the morning.

After scores of bloodcurdling anti-NATO speeches by parliamentarians, the Skupstina took no further action on the question of inviting foreign troops. We went to the airport late on the afternoon of March 23. Tina, Phil, and I prepared to board a small jet to Skopje, where I would resume my duties as ambassador. Holbrooke and the others boarded a flight to Budapest; from there they would go on to the States. Our embassy in Belgrade was evacuated that same day. Tina, who had previously served in Belgrade and knew many of the airport workers, had many tearful farewells that night. Ninety minutes later we arrived at the Macedonian capital, where previously friendly faces of airport workers had turned sad and sullen at the prospect of outright war on their border.